John Macmillan Herdman is a Scottish novelist, short story writer and literary critic. He is the author of seventeen books including five novels and various works of shorter fiction, a play, two critical studies and a memoir, and he has contributed to twenty other books. His work has been translated, broadcast and anthologized, and taught at universities in France, Australia and Russia.

Fionn Mac Colla was a Scottish novelist closely connected to the Scottish Gaelic language and culture who campaigned for it to return to what he perceived to be its rightful place in the Scottish mainstream. He was a good personal friend of Hugh MacDiarmid and Helen Cruickshank.